As the Second World War rages, parachute maker Carmen Jones wages her own quarrel involving an airman and a boxer. Using the score from Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen, this adaptation by Oscar Hammerstein II resets the story with an all African-American cast, and is the first major New York revival since its debut on Broadway 75 years ago.

Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose (Caroline, or Change; A Raisin in the Sun; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) will play the title role in this production directed by CSC Artistic Director John Doyle (The Color Purple) and choreographed by Bill T. Jones (Fela!)

Carmen Jones, currently playing at Classic Stage Company, is pretty much what you’d expect from a show directed by Tony Award winner John Doyle, choreographed by Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones, and starring two-time Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose — in other words, near perfection. Glorious and devastating in one package, it’s a thrilling, artistically concise revival of Oscar Hammerstein’s take on Georges Bizet’s Carmen, featuring an all African-American cast who can sing like nobody’s business (and incidentally, they can also dance). Briefly, the story involves a young WWII soldier named Joe (Clifton Duncan) who falls under the influence of the seductive Carmen Jones (Anika Noni Rose). Her sway compels him to abandon both his childhood sweetheart Cindy Lou (a beautifully innocent Lindsay Roberts) and his army post, but Carmen’s love is as free as her spirit, and when her passion for Joe grows cold, she tries to give him up in favor of the famous prize fighter Husky Miller (David Aron Damane, who towers in both height and stage presence). Joe, however, is unwilling to be given up: “Y’know you are tied to me, an y’know you’ll never git away… where you go I’m goin’ too, an’ wh …Read more